Temples to CuriosityInternational Museums Day

"Temple". "Curiosity". Unfortunately not words ordinarily associated with museums today. But Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, includes both: Museum \Mu'se'um\, n. [L., a temple of the Muses, hence, a place of study [...] a Muse.] A repository or a collection of natural, scientific, or literary curiosities, or of works of art."

On Sunday May 16th, sixteen national and regional museums participate in the first region-wide celebration of International Museums' Day. Begun in 1977, the day is marked by free admission to all participating museums (world-wide) and special events.

Thinking about it got me pondering the origins of museums. In one of my digs, I unearthed the Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary definition: "...a seat of the muses, a museum; a place for learned occupations, a library, academy [...] from Greek Mouseion, from neuter of Mouseios of the Muses, from Mousa."

But what about before that? Isn't that the acid test facing museums today? In the ancient world, "art" and "life" were not so ruthlessly separated. To a large extent this remains true in much of the Southern hemisphere today—museums are not seen as the sole repository for all that is sacred, beautiful and collectively valued.

My own theory is that the earliest museums were in fact temples. With no division between the object, its sacredness and its symbolic power, much that was valuable (monetarily too) and sacred was kept in temples. (Ironic considering how much religious art now fills museums.).

When these bonds were broken, the symbolically gutted "objects" were placed in museums and called "art". The motivation for producing "art" sometimes got thrown off—it was merely to see the said "art" on the wall of a "museum". Museums became institutions associated with an elite, a sterile space where everything was objectified. One now required certain knowledge to "understand art"—being a human being with life experience was no longer enough. "Art" became disconnected from the symbolic world embedded in daily life.

Are shops a late twentieth century version of museums? We want those things, glimpsed through reflections and blurs on the other side of the pane... and like museums charging admission, getting closer costs money. Once bought, the promise is that the objects will transform us. Is this a mockery of the sacred power once contained by the objects enshrined in our temples? The objects we felt a connection with? The objects we could see for free?

Did the separation between the object and it's symbolic power occur during the Victorian era? The philosophy of rationalism, Darwinism, the idea of collecting things to categorize and file away in museums appears to have taken serious root then.

But what of the future of museums? Several years ago I was visiting the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax. During my almost two-hour stay, a large boisterous group of young school children were visiting. On my way out, I noticed them hunched over huge sheets of paper, strewn across the floor, a floor bristling with bottles of crayons, markers, and colouring pencils. Nearby a massive dark painting by Nyna Cropas called Kristallnacht hung on a wall. Kristallnacht - the Night of the Broken Glass - was the pogrom executed by the Nazis against German Jews in November 1938, the beginnings of the holocaust.

The children chatted on, completely absorbed in their drawings. "I hope you enjoyed your visit and that the noise didn't disturb you." A museum staff person had come up to me.

Smiling, I told her I was really surprised to see so many children in a museum. It's become so rare. And as to the noise, aren't children and their curiosity a part of life? Isn't Life what museums are supposed to be about?